


who am i to disagree

by emAvox



Category: Battlefield (Video Games)
Genre: Battlefield 4, Gen, Major Character Death refers to dream sequences, Pac has bad dreams, best bros pac & recker, does anyone still care about this game?, just guys being dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 03:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18002648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emAvox/pseuds/emAvox
Summary: Pac keeps dreaming about Recker's death.





	who am i to disagree

“Clear!” Irish calls.

 

Pac blinks and the haze settles. Dunn and Irish are still taking cover behind a barricade due east. He blinks again and they’re gone.

 

“Reck?” he asks, his voice sounding incredibly young. The man in question, crouching next to him, glances over briefly before tilting his head back toward enemy lines.

 

“We’re clear!” Dunn calls; he and Irish are behind the barricade again, like they had never moved. The asphalt under Pac’s boots melts into sunbaked sand.

 

_ This isn’t right _ , he thinks to himself.  _ Where’s--? _

 

“Move out!” Dunn shouts. Irish shouts an affirmative and Pac feels his body move without his say-so, his rifle shifting automatically. Next to him, Recker smoothly rounds the corner of the barricade, coming out of his crouch. He takes one step.

 

A whistle follows the concussive sound of someone shooting. There’s a snap as Recker jerks in place beside him before falling like a puppet with cut strings. A fine red mist settles on Pac’s face. The three remaining squad members duck back into cover. Pac grabs the shoulder strap of Recker’s vest and hauls him behind the barricade, feet digging down into the crumbling earth.

 

With one last pull, the man is fully in cover. Pac pants as he rolls Recker onto his back; the front of the man’s torso is covered in blood, and Pac’s heart leaps into his throat like a startled bird.

 

“Pac, sitrep!” Dunn calls under a sudden hail of bullets. “What the hell is going on over there?”

 

Pac flinches as stray bullets take out chunks of the barricade just behind his head. He tries to swallow past the lump in his throat as he stares down at Recker’s open, sightless eyes and corpse-like face. He presses one hand uselessly against the gaping hole in Recker’s chest.

 

“Dead, sir,” he shouts back hoarsely. “Shot through the--”

  
  
  


_ “--HEART, AND YOU’RE TO BLAME, DARLIN’, YOU GIVE LOVE--” _

 

Pac jerks upright as he wakes, banging his face into the bunk above his in a terrible example of cause and effect. He slumps back down and muffles a groan, cradling his pounding nose and closing his eyes. The marine sleeping across from him wakes at the same time.

 

“For fuck’s sake, Jay, wear your fucking headphones!” the man snarls before pointedly turning over.

 

“Sorry,” says a sheepish voice from a bunk close to the door. Bon Jovi abruptly stops playing.

 

Pac’s heart is going about a mile a minute and adrenaline is rushing through his veins. His head slowly clears and he settles enough that when a soft knock (1-2, 1, 1-2-3) taps at the door he doesn’t try to bash his face open again. When he cracks an eyes he sees Recker standing in the doorway, looking his way. They make eye contact and Recker jerks his head toward the hallway. Pac sighs and clambers off of his bunk, easing his way down quietly so as not to disturb his bunkmates. 

 

“Garrison needs us,” Reck says once they’re both out of the bunkroom and walking through the hallway. He shoots a look at Pac’s nose and asks, “You okay?”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Pac says absently, rubbing his face with one hand. “Dreamt about Baku, that’s all.”

 

Recker’s mouth twists down at the corner, and Pac knows without the other man speaking that he’s had the same kinds of dreams.

 

The next night, on their way to Shanghai, Pac dreams about shooting Reck in the face in the safehouse, dreams about the car. Recker stares at him as the vehicle sinks, trapped in Dunn’s seat, long after he’s awake.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Pac presses the wrong button in the elevator and the doors open to a floor full of soldiers, a firing squad. He and Irish duck to the sides as one man shouts in Chinese. Recker doesn’t move, even as Pac and Irish yell at him to find cover. A deafening wave of bullets puncture through him, his body jerking as he’s shot again and again.

 

“No!” Pac screams. Irish pounds on the elevator buttons and the doors slowly close. Reck staggers against the bullet-ridden metal walls behind him and slides to the floor, leaving a smear of blood as he descends. His grip on his guns loosens and it clatters to the floor.

 

“Goddamnit, Recker!” Irish swears.

 

The elevator lurches to the left and Pac wakes up in a rocking boat somewhere between Shanghai and the Valkyrie. A heavy hand lands on his shoulder and Irish peers down at him with a critical eye.

 

“You need some real sleep, man,” he says. Pac nods wearily, tired down to his bones and freezing from the wind off of the water.

 

“Reck’s okay, right?” Pac asks, half slurring his words. Irish gives him a weird look.

 

“Yeah, man, Recker’s fine,” he says. He nods his head to the other side of the boat where Reck is huddling into his jacket, occasionally peering down his scope into the darkness behind them.

 

Irish settles on the deck next to Pac and nudges his shoulder. “Rack out, little brother,” he says. “Reck and I got watch.”

 

Pac mumbles something and is asleep in a moment.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


The foghorn sounds and the bridge crumbles beneath their feet. Pac, Hannah, and Irish fall toward the center of the bridge. Irish is shouting and Hannah is calling after the squad leader and Recker himself makes eye contact with Pac before the weight of the car pushes him over the edge and into the frigid water.

 

_ The straps _ , Pac thinks. His knife is in his hand but it’s covered in blood. The boat stops moving and the bridge stabilizes and  _ none of this is right _ \--

 

Irish falls to his knees at the bridge’s edge, punching the concrete and yelling, “Fuck!”

 

“He’s dead,” Hannah says. “No point in going after him.”

 

“Fuck you, Hannah, Dunn doesn’t deserve to die like that! We have to save him!” Irish bites back.

 

“That wasn’t Dunn,” Pac says. The river freezes over. “Irish, what are you talking about? That was Recker! He needs our help!” He tries to move toward the water but his feet won’t budge.

 

“Recker’s dead,” Irish says in Garrison’s voice. “You killed him, Sergeant.”

 

Pac looks down at the knife in his hands, dripping blood like a living thing. His hands are covered in it. “No, I--”

 

“You should’ve cut the straps,” Hannah says. The bridge shivers and gives way, dumping them all into freezing darkness.

 

He slams his eyes open and is on the burning airfield, rolling over and coughing through the smoke. Dog tags lay glinting in the firelight to his left and he knows without looking that they’re Recker’s. When he looks up the airfield is whole again, military planes firing off and up into the sky. No missiles come.

  
  


\----------

 

The thing with Recker is that he’s undoubtedly the best at what he does. In a firefight, he seems invincible and he’s never failed to cover Irish and Pac when things get hot. He doesn’t talk much but that’s because the three of them can talk without saying anything. Pac’s only been with them a year but Tombstone feels like a brotherhood, not just a squad. At the same time, Reck doesn’t  _ talk _ and that makes him an easy target for aggravated marines.

 

“Nothing to say, huh?” a sneering man had said in the Valkyrie rec room. It had been after Shanghai, after Irish had gone over Reck’s head to lead the refugees to the ship. The man (Johnson?) and Recker stood toe to toe.

 

Recker was silent, even when Johnson shoved him back a few paces.

 

“Hey,” Pac had said, a warning. He had taken a step toward them but Reck had shot him a look that told him to stay where he was. “This isn’t Recker’s fault. Stop giving him crap about it.”

 

Johnson had glared over at Pac for a moment before looking back at Reck, jabbing one finger into his chest. “Answer for your squadmate, Recker. If you had better control over him, this wouldn’t have happened. Dunn was wrong to put you in charge.”

 

Recker’s face hadn’t changed. Pac, ignoring Reck’s non-verbal order, had stepped up behind his shoulder. He’d relaxed his arms, ready to beat Johnson’s nose in. After a few moments of silence, Johnson had scoffed and spit in Recker’s face. Pac was held back from lunging after him by Reck’s arm, which had come up to keep him in place.

 

“Fuck off, Tombstone,” Johnson had said. He walked away.

 

Pac had tried to go after him but Recker had clamped a firm hand on the younger man’s shoulder and forcibly steered him out of the room and into the hallway. Once they were a few feet away from the door, Pac had ripped his shoulder out of Recker’s grip.

 

“Why the hell do you do that, Reck?” he’d demanded. The man had kept walking until Pac grabbed his shoulder and turned him around. “You let them walk all over you and treat you like crap-- why don’t you stand up for yourself?”

 

Reck had looked at him for a moment before he answered. “I don’t care what they think of me, Pac. I stand by my squad. Always.”

 

With that he’d turned and walked off, Pac joining him after a few steps.

 

“Someone’s gotta watch your back,” Pac had muttered, shooting Reck an annoyed look.

 

Reck had looked at him out of the corner of his eye before smiling and wiping Johnson’s spit off of his face. “That’s what you and Irish are for, right?”

 

Pac had to look out for him, he and Irish  _ both _ did. If he didn’t, no one else would. Maybe that’s why he kept having those dreams.

 

\----------

 

It was a long time after Shanghai that Pac finally sees Reck, Irish, and Hannah, and when it finally happens he almost shoots Recker in the face again.

 

“Son of a bitch,” Irish laughs, pulling him in for a hug. “We thought you were dead, buddy!”

 

When Irish lets him go, Reck hauls him in for a rare embrace. Recker’s hand tightens briefly on the back of Pac’s neck before letting him lean back. Reck checks his face, for what he isn’t sure; after a moment the older man squeezes his neck again and releases him with an incredulous smile and a laugh. They move on.

  
  
  
  
  


Pac sees them off in the RHIB. The C4 he hands over settles heavily on the floor of the vehicle, and his stomach drops with it.

 

“You’re not coming, Pac?” Hannah asks. The stitches in his gut tug and he shakes his head.

 

“You’re staying alive,” he says. He looks at Irish, his older brother, Hannah, his new ally, and Recker. Recker, the most dependable squadmate he’s ever had at his back. The man has a bruise blooming on his forehead from the butt of a Chinese soldier’s rifle and a healing scar at the hollow of the throat. “That’s an order.”

 

“We’ll live,” Irish says. “You keep the Valkyrie afloat until we get back.”

 

“Oo-rah,” Pac says grimly.

 

“Pac,” Recker says, and the younger man snaps his head to the squad leader. The man leans over the Valkyrie’s railing and grabs Pac’s shoulder. “Stay safe.”

 

“Understood,” Pac says. 

 

Reck nods, the RHIB lowers, and they’re speeding off toward rocky seas, explosions, and certain death. It feels more than wrong, watching the squad head into the fight without him. Part of him wants to look away, like when he used to cover his eyes during scary movies, but he’s not a kid anymore. If they die, he owes it to them to watch.

  
  
  
  
  
  


“ Pac ,” a voice says.

 

He jerks against the arm pressing against his shoulders, holding him down. His eyes open but all he can see is red light in the semi-darkness. Without thinking he reaches up to claw his way free.

 

“Pakowski, settle,” the voice says, and the arm shakes him a bit. Once he realizes that it’s Recker, he calms quickly, eyes finding the older man’s face in the half-lit bunkroom. After a moment, Recker retracts his arm and asks, “You good?”

 

Pac breathes. “Yeah, Reck,” he says, and his voice sounds like he’s been screaming all night.

 

“Thousand yards of shit?” Reck asks, watching him closely. “You were thrashing pretty good.”

 

“Shit,” Pac mutters. “No.” 

 

He all but falls out of his bunk and stumbles after Reck into the hall. Recker keeps shooting him looks, the same ones he’s been leveling Pac’s way since Baku, but he doesn’t ask.

 

“Where’s Irish?” Pac asks.

 

“Mess. Probably getting in trouble,” Recker says. Pac huffs a laugh.

 

They exit to the ship’s balcony before moving back down into the bowels, but Pac stops by the railing. Reck takes less than a moment to notice and comes to stand next to him.

 

“Reck,” Pac starts. “Do you ever…”

 

His throat stops working as he stares out at the dark water, no lights visible on the horizon except for the stars. He thinks about Baku, about Shanghai, about Suez. Recker doesn’t push him, just stands next to him in solidarity and waits for Pac to sort himself out.

 

“I keep dreaming that you die,” Pac finally says. “All the time, on every mission. I don’t know why. It’s just you,” he adds. “Never Irish.”

 

Reck lets that sit. “Pac, that’s all I see when I close my eyes,” he says. “Me not protecting one of you.”

 

“That’s all you do, Reck,” Pac says wearily. “It’s what you do best.”

 

“Not always,” Reck says. He leans his back against the railing and crosses his arms. “Not with Dunn. And not with you, on the airfield.”

 

“You did your best, Reck, and I lived,” Pac protested.

 

Recker shook his head but didn’t argue. “Everyone has dreams like that, Pac, even Irish. Part of the life.”

 

“Well, it sucks,” Pac says. He huffs a sigh.

 

“‘No regrets,’ that’s what Irish says,” Reck laughs. “Wouldn’t trade keeping you two alive for sleep any day.”

 

The sun begins its ascent and its light slowly touches the horizon. Around them, the Valkyrie limps along through the open water, protecting her remaining crew members as best she can. The fires had been put out and the infirmary was full of marines and refugees alike.

 

Pac gives him a wry smile. “No fucking regrets, Reck.”

**Author's Note:**

> mean marine is the guy who tells Recker to put Irish on a leash. also sorry Hannah, i love you but i gotta keep tombstone together :(


End file.
